In Qatar, when you hire a domestic helper, you pay

the  agency fees, the traveling expenses to bring her from her country ( nowadays you need to add the COVID derivatives as the quarantine at a hotel), and then make what is called “sponsorship” which  basically means to register her legally for this person to have rights as public health, for example. These expenses can usually overcome 5,000$ and your employe commit oneself for a 2 years contract.

What is actually happening is that these nannies or home workers, contact by social media with ilegal employers who promise them to increase their salary or to give them  better working conditions ( always without any guarantee as they aren’t provided of any legal contract…). Many of these domestic helpers literally “run away” from their jobs letting their employers “down” after all the effort that they already made to bring this person from her original country and give her a economical opportunity.

We should not forget that most of these families are hard workers, also expats, without any family around to help them with their kids & home duties. And that’s not all: once this “runaway maid” has been found by the authorities, the law in Qatar obliges the sponsor to bear the cost of the ticket to bring the maid  back to her country … Is this fair??

What we want to reach with this petition:

Once the “runaway maid” has been find by police, the authorities will not make the sponsor pay the ticket if she hasn’t finalized her contract ( 2 years), instead of this, she should be pushed to tell for whom has she been working in ilegal conditions ( as this person/ company is also breaking the law) and this person/ company should pay expenses of the ticket for the maid to go back.
If the maid refuses to say who was the illegal sponsor and it can’t be identified, then she should be responsable for her ticket and stay in prison until she is able to come back.
If she declares herself insolvent, then her family should be the one responsible  for her repatriation expenses.
In case of her family declares to insolvent as well, then is time for her embassy to take the responsibility for this person. The maid should not stay in jail for a longer period than 3 months.
The maid who incurs to break her contract should be banished from enter Qatar again to develop any kind of work, and the maids companies should have a system with the names and passport numbers of all theses persons to protect their clients in the future.
It should be also interesting to develop a communication system in between countries in the gulf area to prevent each other from this cheater workers.

If you had reached  this petition till here Thanks so much for your time and you can give us also support by signing & sharing!